President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is directing the Department of Commerce to start work on a new U.S. census—one that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the population count.
“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”
If implemented, this move would mark a significant break from the way the census has traditionally been conducted. For centuries, it has counted every person living in the U.S., regardless of citizenship status.
Trump’s announcement comes as the White House urges GOP-led states to redraw their congressional maps to boost Republicans’ chances of holding their House majority after next year’s midterm elections. Texas has started that process, though Democrats there stalled it by fleeing the state, thus denying the legislature a quorum.
Some of Trump’s critics correctly criticize the census plan as yet another blatant power grab.
“The next part of the plan to steal the midterms and/or the 2028 election—an attempt to do a mid-decade census to take seats and electoral votes away from blue states,” former Republican and anti-Trumper Ron Filipkowski posted on X. “I knew this was coming.”
Naturally, MAGA supporters are fully on board. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia reposted Trump’s announcement while promoting her “Making American Elections Great Again Act,” which would order “a new census counting American citizens only” and demand reapportionment based on that revised count.
However, that plan runs afoul of the Constitution. The law requires a national census every 10 years to count all residents, not just citizens. The official census website clearly states that the decennial count is “designed to count every resident in the United States.” That’s how congressional seats and Electoral College votes are assigned.
But legality has never stopped Trump before.
During his first term, he attempted to force the U.S. Census Bureau to include a citizenship question—“Is this person a citizen of the United States?”—despite warnings it would discourage responses. A federal court called the move an “egregious” violation of the law, and the Supreme Court eventually blocked it.
Trump persisted. He directed federal agencies to collect citizenship data without directly involving the census. His main push failed then, ahead of the 2020 census, but now he appears to want to restart the process midstream.
If successful, states with large undocumented populations—like California—are expected to lose congressional seats, while whiter, more rural, redder states could gain influence. A 2020 Pew Research Center report indicated that excluding noncitizens from the census might cause some states, including California and Texas, to lose seats in the House.
There’s also the logistical aspect. The 2020 census cost nearly $14 billion and took years to prepare. The idea that Trump’s Commerce Department could produce a new census within a year or two is unrealistic. Preparations for the 2030 census are already underway, and federal law requires any proposed questions to be submitted to Congress at least two years before data collection.
This raises another possibility: If Trump cannot pull off a new census, he might still influence the next one. With his term ending in 2029, he could manipulate how the 2030 census is conducted.
Earlier this year, former President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Census Bureau, Robert Santos, resigned. He was the first Latino to hold the position and left midway through his term, citing a desire to spend more time with family. His departure creates an opening for Trump to install an ally who might be more willing to bend or break the rules.
Trump didn’t develop this idea on his own, by the way. As MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones pointed out, Greene has been leading the charge, falsely calling the last census Biden’s “crooked census,” conveniently ignoring that it was primarily organized and conducted during Trump’s first term.
Trump’s last-ditch efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants weren’t the only factors threatening the 2020 census. The COVID-19 pandemic also disrupted the count. The census results were delayed until early 2021, when Biden blocked Trump’s attempt to exclude noncitizens from apportionment totals.
The Census Bureau later admitted that Black, Hispanic, and Native American populations were undercounted, while white and Asian populations were overcounted—a common trend likely worsened by the pandemic and political interference.
Whether Trump’s census plan actually materializes remains uncertain—but that’s almost beside the point. For Trump, the goal isn’t accuracy; it’s power. It’s another effort to manipulate the system so Republicans can win even when voters favor Democrats.
Undercounting blue states, redrawing district lines, suppressing the vote, and altering the rules—that’s the GOP’s strategy. And when they can’t win honestly, they just change the game.